The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1887-05-04
HE CLARION.
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.
ELOQUENT DISCOURSE CONCERNING
GOOD AND BAD LITERATURE.

BROOKLYN, May AT the tabernacle this
morning the pastor, the Rev 7. De Witt
Talmage, d. D., expounded some of the Pro-
verbs Of Solomon The congregation sang
with magnificent effect the hymn beginning:
Arm Of the Lord awake, awake,
Put on thy strength, the nations shake.
DIR. Talnage took for his text Acts xix, 10:
MANY Of them also which used curious
arts brought their books together, and burned
them before all men: and they counted the
price Of them, and found it 5000 pieces of
silver"
Paul had been stirring up Ephesus with
some lively sermons about the sins Of that
place Among the more important results was
the fact that the citizens brought out their
bad books, and in public place made bon
fire Of them. | zee the people coming out
with their arms full of Ephesian literature,
and tossing It into the flames. / hear an
economist standing by and saying: "Stop this
waste. Here are 81 800 worth Of books-do
you propose to burn them all upi II you don't
want to rea1 them yourselves, sell them, and
let somebody else read them mo" said the
people, "if these books are not good enough
for us, they are not good for anybody else,
and we shall stand and watch until the last
leaf has turned to ashes. They have done us
a world of harm, and they shall never do
others harm" Hear the flames crackle and
roarl
Wen, my friends, one Of the wants of the
cities Of this country is a great bonfire of bad
books and newspapers. We have enough fuel
70 make blaze 200 feet high Many of the
publishing houses would do well to throw into
the blaze their entire stock of goods. Bring
forth the insufeffble trash and put it into the
fire, and let it be known, in the presence OF
God, and angels, and men, that you are going
10 rid your homes of the overlapping and
underlying curse of profigate literature
The printing press is the mightiest agency
on the earth for good and for evil. The min
lister of the Gospel, standing IN pulpit, has
responsible position; but do not think it is
as responsible as the position of an editor or a
publisher. At what distant point of time, at
what far out cycle Of eternity will cease the
influence of a Henry J. Raymond, or a Horace
Greeley, or a James Gordon Bennett, or a
Watson Webb, or an Erastus Brooks, or
a Thomas Kinsella, Take the simple fact
that our New York dailies now have a circu-
lation Of about $780, 900 per day, and add 10
it the fact that three of our weekly period
icals have an aggregate circulation of about
100000. and then cipher, if you can, how
far up, and how far down and how far out
reach the influences of the American printing
press Great God, what is to be the issue of
all thsl ! believe the Lord intends the print
ing press TO be the chief means for the worlds
rescue and evangeization, and | think that
the great last battle of the world will not be
fought with swords and guns, but with types
and presses-a purified and Gospel literature
triumphing over, trampling down and crush
ing out forever that which is depraved. The
only way TO overcome unclean literature is
by scattering abroad that which is healthful.
May God speed the cylinders of an honest in
telligent, aggressive, Christian printing press.
have to tell you this morning that the
greatest blessing that ever came to this nation
is that of an elevated literature, and the
greatest scousge has been that of unclean
literature. This last has its victims in all oc-
equations and departments 1t has helped to
fill insane asylums, and penitentiaries, and
aims houses and dens of shame. The bodies of
this infection lie in the hospitals and in the
graves, while their souls are being tossed over
into a lost eternity, an avalanche of horror
and despair
The London plague was nothing to it, That
counted its victims by thousands, but this
modern pest has already shoveled its millions
into the charne house of the morally dead
The longest rail train that ever ran over the
Erie or Hudson tracks was not long enough
or large enough to carry the beastliness and
the putrefaction which have been gathered
up in bad books and newspapers of this land
in the last twenty years.
Now, it is amid such circumstances that |
put this morning a question Of overmaster-
ing Importance to you and your families.
What books and newspapers shall we read
You see 1 group them together. news
paper is only book in a swifter and more
portable shape, and the same rules which
will apply to book reading will apply to
newspaper reading. What shall we read,
Shall our minds be the receptacle of every
thing that an author has mind to writel Shall
there be no distinction between the tree of
life and the tree of deatha Shall we stoop
down and drink out of the trough which the
wickedness of men has filled with pollution
and shame2 Shall we mire in impurity and
chase fantastic will o. the wisps across the
swamps when might walk in the bloom
ing gardens of Code Oh, MOI For the sake of
our present and everlasting welfare we must
make an intelligent Christian choice. Stand
ing as we do chin deep in fictitious literature,
the first question that many of the young
people are asking me is: "Shall we read
novels2n ! reply: There are novels that are
pure, good, Christian, elevating 10 the heart
and enrolling TO the life. But have still
further to say that believe that ninety mine
out OF 100 novels in this day are baleful and
destructive to the last degree. A pure work
of fiction is history and poetry combined 1t
Is a history of things around us with the
licenses and the assumed names of poetry.
The world can never pay the debt which il
owes to such fiction writers as Hawthorne
and Mckenzie, and Landon and Hunt, and
Arthur and Marion Harland, and Others
whose names are familiar to all. The follies
of high life were never better exposed than
by Miss Edgeworth The memories of the
past were never more faithfully embalmed
than in the writings of Walter Scott.
Cooper's novels are BEAUTIFULLY redolent with
the breath of the seaweed and the air of the
American forest. Charles Kingsley has
smitten the morbidity of the world, and led
a great many to appreciate the poetry of
sound health, strong muscles and fresh air.
Thackeray did grand work in caricaturing
the pretenders to gentility and high blood.
Dickens has built his own monument in his
books which are an everlasting plea for the
poor and the anathema of injustice. Now, i say,
books like these read at right times, and read
in right proportion with other books cannot
help but be ennobiing and purifying; but, alas
for the loathsome and impure literature that
has come upon this country in the shape of
novels like freshet overlooking all the
banks of decency and common sensel They
are coming from some of the most celebrated
publishing houses of the country. khey are
coming with recommendations of some of our
religious newspapers. They lie on your center
table 10 curse your children and blast with
their internal fires generations unborn. You
find these books in the desk of the school
miss, in the trunk of the young man, in the
steamboat cabin. ON the table Of the hotel
reception room. You see a light in yo1r
child's room late at night You suddenly 60
in and say: "What are you doing9" Il am
reading "What are you readingT" "A
book" You look at the book: it is a bad
book "Where did you get itr 81 bor-
rowed it. Alas, there are always those
abroad who would like to loan your son or
daughter bad book. Everywhere, every
where an unclean literature. charge upon
it the destruction of 10000 immortal souls,
and bid you this morning wake up 10 the
magnitude of the theme. / shall take all the
worlds literature-good novels and bad,
travels true and false, histories faithful and
incorrect, legends beautiful and monstrous,
all tracts, all chronicles, all epilogues, all
family, city, state and national libraries
pile them up in a pyramid of literature and
then shall bring to bear upon it some grand,
glorious, infalhble, unmistakable Christian
principles God help me to speak with refer
ence to my last account and God help you to
listen.
/ charge you, in the first place, to stand
aloof from all books that give false pictures
of human life. Life is neither a tragedy nor
farce. Men are not all either knaves or
heroes. Women are neither angels nor furies.
And yet. il you depended upon much of the
literature OF the day you would get the idea
that life, instead of being something earnest,
something practical. is a ftful and fantas-
tic and extravagant thing How poorly
prepared are that young man and woman
for the duties Of to-day who spent last night
wadjng through brilliant passages descriptive
of magnificent knavery and wickednessl The
man win be looking all day long for his hero
inc in the tin shop, by the forge, in the
factory, in the counting room and he win not